Things Not to Tell the Grandkids
by Sarah1281
Summary: Ted loved being a big hero and he was already planning out the story he'll be telling his and  hopefully  Audrey's grandchildren one day. Still, he's realized that there were parts of the story that other people really didn't need to know...


Things Not to Tell the Grandkids

Disclaimer: I do not own the Lorax.

Relatively it hadn't been all that long but already the world was completely different than the one that Ted had been born into. Oh, people still loved their conveniences and were loathe to give some of them up but the ones that they were less attached to (the fake trees first among them) were quickly being done away with.

And Ted was a hero. It still felt like he had barely done anything, just listened to a story and convinced people to let him plant a seed but everyone was convinced that he was the savior of Thneedville and, well, who was he to argue? Being famous and a hero was awesome. There was even a statue of him planting the seed and everything. Audrey said it made him look very manly.

And because there was very little chance that he could see of _trees_ ruining everything for everyone (no matter what O'Hare said), he wouldn't have to worry that one day people would turn on him when he ruined everything for everybody.

Fortunately, it had been so long since the last tree fell that when Ted actually did manage to drag the Once-ler to the town named for his invention, people didn't realize how much their problems were all his fault in the first place. After all, living out in the wastelands alone for all of those years thinking about everything his short-sightedness had destroyed really was punishment enough. People who hadn't heard the story and hadn't seen it the way Ted had might not agree but they really didn't need to know now did they?

Ted was sure that his fame would one day be less a part of his life as people got used to the change but that was okay because it might get old eventually (he doubted it but it might) and because people would _always_ know what he'd done.

Even if he accomplished nothing else for the rest of his life then he could still proudly tell his grandchildren (that he was absolutely not too young to think about having no matter what his mom said) that he had been the one to bring back the trees. He hadn't done it alone but without him it never would have happened.

Just…there were a few things that he knew, even now, that he was going to leave out of the story.

_The whole society-changing ordeal started because he was trying to impress a girl. _

It was, strictly speaking, what happened and yet…it really made the whole thing seem less epic, somehow. It had all started out in the realm of buying toys to land them in Audrey's backyard so he had an excuse to talk to her. Now, he needed no such excuse as their adventure and his heroic deed had bonded them forever.

Ted rather wanted to be remembered as the boy who cared an awful lot and thus beat the odds and wouldn't quit until he had brought back the trees instead of the boy who really, really wanted a kiss. And if Audrey ever found out just why he had done it then he would just _die_.

It was all very well and good that he sincerely cared _now_ but it sort of diminished everything when you considered how things had begun. It really was a good thing that the Once-ler had made him keep coming back until he was positive that Ted cared because without it Ted might have just dropped the seed off or told everyone and O'Hare would have easily been able to squash things and then nothing would have gotten better.

And while the truth might make a romantic story one day if his grandkids' grandmother was Audrey, if it _wasn't_…well, that would make things awkward. And even if it was (hopefully it would be) then it was better for Audrey to be his fellow enlightened tree lover or the one who got him interested in trees instead of the girl that he thought was so pretty he'd do something stupid for and it all somehow worked out for the best.

_The Once-ler's door kicked his ass. _

It really wasn't his fault that that had happened and as such it shouldn't reflect badly on him.

Key word there: _shouldn't_.

It would, though, it absolutely would. The mental image alone of a door kicking his ass would send people into obnoxious peals of laughter.

Never mind that he had examined the contraption carefully and even asked the Once-ler about it and even if he _had_ known it was there (which he had no reason to know) he still wouldn't have been able to avoid it once he pressed the doorbell and the Once-ler hadn't ever intended to answer until he had.

And who in the world thought sending someone flying was an appropriate response to ringing a doorbell? Well, it was true that the Once-ler had made it quite clear via his signs that he hadn't wanted to be disturbed but _still_. Wouldn't it have been easier to just not have a doorbell or something? He seemed perfectly content just ignoring all those knocks.

On his subsequent visits he had the feeling that the Once-ler was almost waiting for him and he had never needed the sound that the insane doorknob made as it knocked him about to attract the man's attention.

Yes, in the official story as would be told to any future grandchildren he had (and children, he supposed, but somehow it was more interesting if he was telling it to the grandchildren) was that he had rang the doorbell like a normal person and that had prompted the Once-ler to peer at him through the cracks in the boards on the window and to send down his thingamajig that made it easier to hear like…Well, no, that wasn't exactly normal people behavior on the Once-ler's part but he had spent a half a century or so as a hermit so if he would rather be a crazy old hermit instead of just an old hermit then that was really his prerogative.

Either way, there was no massive wipe-outs to Ted's name and he had been suave and sophisticated (and also earnest and sincere) the entire time.

_He probably wouldn't have kept returning to the Once-ler if O'Hare hadn't tried to stop him. _

Audrey hadn't even known of his plan to find the Once-ler and get a tree. She might not have even known that the Once-ler existed or she likely would have been out there petitioning for a tree. He didn't know how she knew so much about real trees when no one less than sixty had a clue but he knew that if Audrey had been the one to meet the Once-ler then he would have given her the seed on the spot. Everyone could tell how much _she_ cared.

So yeah, Audrey wasn't expecting him to get her a seed. She probably wasn't ever expecting her dream to come true and she would have gone on to date and maybe marry either way. And since she hadn't known that he was trying to find her a seed, she wouldn't be privy to his failure, either.

He would know but he was good at denial and his grandmother would know but she never judged him. The Once-ler would also know but the whole point of never going back would be never seeing him again and it wasn't like Ted thought he was really expected back anyway.

He had almost decided not to go back the second time after the Once-ler's door had viciously attacked him and the Once-ler himself had rambled on and on about feeding junk food to forest animals and the bad songs he'd sung way back when he was young (which was probably around the time that his Grammy Norma was young). He showed no sign of getting to the point anytime soon and any time Ted dared interrupt he'd _swear_ that the Once-ler responded by going slower.

Yeah, he knew that Audrey wasn't _actually_ going to marry or even necessarily date someone who could give her a tree and he wasn't even convinced at this point that the Once-ler could help him get one. It was pretty hard to even motivate him to return that second time so he doubted he'd have made a third trip.

But then O'Hare and his thugs showed up.

Suddenly things were a lot more interesting.

He hadn't personally thought the Once-ler's rambling tale had been worth any sort of notice from the mayor himself – or, well, anyone – but apparently O'Hare disagreed. The richest and most powerful man in town had taken quite the interest in him because of the trees.

The trees. For the first time, it was like they mattered to someone other than Audrey. O'Hare had seemed almost _afraid_ of the idea of the trees coming back.

And he had been quite insistent on Ted not hearing anything more about them or leaving the town ever again.

The grandkids would hopefully think that he was being brave by risking life and limb in defying the corrupt mogul who ran their town and that he cared only for bringing back the trees and he would encourage this idea.

Just the same, he remembered quite clearly, as he watched O'Hare and his thugs take off and then the next time when they had removed the exit to the town, that all he was thinking was, "Challenge accepted."

_Saving the trees required him to participate in a rousing musical number. _

This one is not even a little negotiable. No one who wasn't there will ever hear about what happened from him.

He's not even sure why that delivery guy thought that singing would help things. People never really sang outside of those coordinated musical numbers O'Hare set up from time to time about how wonderful Thneedville was and those were _definitely_ not spontaneous.

No boy in the world wanted it to be known that he was involved with singing (well, as far as he knew. He couldn't imagine why anyone _would_) because there was something decidedly unmanly about it. It wasn't very epic, either. Ted bravely making a speech and winning the townspeople over, sure. Other townspeople sharing their stories and siding with him, why not? Other townspeople bursting into song as they voiced their support?

Um…no.

He hadn't complained at the time because he hadn't known whether or not he'd get to plant the seed at all and he wasn't about to argue with results but it was a little embarrassing to look back on. And apparently they'd gotten so loud that the Once-ler could hear the all the way out there in his wilderness home.

Make no mistake, if his alternatives were singing his way to saving the trees or not getting to bring the trees back at all (which they were, really) then he would choose the singing every time. Very, very reluctantly but he'd choose it all the same.

But when he was telling his tale fifty years or so in the future when many of the people who witnessed the musical number were gone and everyone's memory had faded it was going to be a stirring speech instead. Other people could cry, he was fine with that, but there was absolutely no singing involved whatsoever.

_He cried when the rain came back. _

He had been hanging out with Audrey when it happened and it was easy to disguise the tears with raindrops.

It wasn't that he was embarrassed, exactly, it just felt like something so intensely personal that he hesitated at the thought of sharing that with anybody, even hypothetical grandchildren he might have one day (please be with Audrey).

He really wasn't embarrassed and in a way that surprised him. He always used to get embarrassed when he cried. Not this time, though.

After all, this was the first bit of real, clean rain since before the trees had all died according to the Once-ler.

And Ted had a heart so how in the world could he have _not_?

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